Reunification
by queendraconis
Summary: Set after PoA. The story of what happens when Remus returns to his home to find a large black dog asleep on his sofa.


Remus stopped outside his house, his hands searching inside his pocket for his key. He hadn't needed it for over 10 months and he missed his chambers at Hogwarts already. In an odd way it had felt like a throwback to his own education, and he had loved being back at his old school. What he didn't love were the memories that the school awoke in him. Memories that stung with pain whenever they entered his mind. He had tried to avoid looking back, and he had tried to focus on other things, but going back to Hogwarts meant that he had no way of avoiding the images that flooded his vision whenever he saw something familiar.

As he heard the lock of the door click open he felt like the past year hadn't happened. It was as if nothing had changed and he knew that he would slip back into the same routine in which he had been for the past 5 years. He opened the door carefully and shut it behind him with a gentle click. Remus didn't care for noise; he liked the quiet. He liked hiding in the silence where nothing and no one could bother him, where he felt safe. He slipped his coat off and hung it perfectly straight on one of the coat hooks on his wall, and took off his shoes and placed them neatly on the shoe rack beneath his coat. After levitating his luggage upstairs into the spare room (his bedroom looked too tidy to be cluttered by his cases) he stepped into his kitchen and made himself a coffee. One thing he had missed was having his own kitchen; his quiet, undisrupted, harmonious kitchen. He sighed with contentment.

He flicked the light off with his wand and made his way into his living room. He was hit by a wall of cold air as he entered, and lit the fire with a simple wave of his wand. As he turned around to sit down on his sofa he almost dropped his coffee as his entire body jumped. As it was, a little bit of coffee made its way onto his carpet and he groaned internally at the mess it would make as it stained. His mind, however, didn't dwell on the stain too much as his whole body had gone into shock and his mind was incoherent. On his sofa, his previously perfect and clean sofa, was draped a large black dog sleeping and snoring quietly. This was a dog Remus would recognise anywhere; an infuriatingly idiotic dog that Remus was far too familiar with.

He sat down softly on his sofa, took a quick drink from his coffee, and hit the dog's head with as much force as he was capable of. The result was that the dog shot up, fell onto the floor, rolled around so that he was facing Remus and glared at him whilst a low growl sounded from his chest. Remus glared back, his scowl not quite as impressive or fierce as that which was directed at him, with a playful glint in his eye.

"Look what you've done to my damn sofa, Padfoot!" Remus said, whilst still staring at the filthy dog in front of him. Padfoot simply looked at him, using a look he used to use to get his way with Remus in the past. He could tell that it was working, as Remus' glare was getting less and less furious by the second.

"Don't you dare look at me like that, Sirius! That look will not work on me. Go use your puppy dog eyes on someone else!"

The obvious anger in his voice upset Sirius. He didn't want Remus to be angry with him. He wanted his friend back, the way things used to be. He had missed him so much that even though he was now glowering at him it still made Sirius feel ridiculously happy because he was there.

Regret hit Remus like a brick wall as he saw his Padfoot bow his head, looking upset and shameful. He had seen the glint of hurt in his eyes and felt the same sting of pain himself. He needed Sirius to be happy again. Every night since he had been taken away he had been haunted by dreams of Sirius in pain, and occasionally when he'd been having a really bad day he had dreamt of Sirius being so upset that he had cried. Remus always woke up crying himself when that happened. He couldn't stand to see his Sirius in pain; he only wanted to see him happy. And this is why he found himself smiling, despite the stain on his sofa, and telling his beloved friend to 'get up from the floor; you'll freeze to death down there'.

As he watched Sirius sit down beside him (this time as Sirius, not Padfoot) Remus felt relief for the first time since this whole thing had started. Sirius was safe. And this was the last thought that he had before he fell asleep, exhausted from his stressful day, in the arms of the man he loved beyond anything.

**A.N.  
**I've been spending most of my time lurking around Remuslives23's FF'net and inevitably it's gotten into my blood and I had to write some Remus/Sirius for myself. If you get chance go and read all the R/Sr stuff on there, it's amazing, and very distracting. I've hardly done any work over the weekend. Oh well, it's not like I had a huge deadline today or anything – Oh wait...

The definition of reunification is 'the act of coming together again'. I thought it was fitting.


End file.
